Becoming Imperial Citizens
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IntroductIon Imperial Citizenship: Nation, Empire, Narrative B Does imperialism mean Canada for the Empire, Australia for the Empire, India for the Empire, or can there be two deﬁni- tions for subjects of one and the same Empire? If there is but one recognized deﬁnition under the flag over which the sun is supposed never to set, then it is for us to see that no injustice shall minimise the rights or privileges of that citizenship, whether that holder is black or white (emphasis in the original).—Memo- randum from Hindu Friend Society, Victoria, British Colum- bia, 19111 [Moolchand] is and has been a quiet inoﬀensive law-abiding citizen, and can in no sense be deemed to be a danger to the State of Western Australia . . . His rights as a British subject were secured to him by the Mutiny Proclamation of 1859 [sic], and by the Proclamation of His Majesty at the Delhi Durbar in 1901, and it is not within the competency of the Australian legislature or executive to override those proclamations . . . the Magna Charta [sic] of the rights and privileges of the people of India.—Petition on behalf of Moolchand Shivcharan Dass, Australia, October 30, 19052 We are not Englishmen or men of English race or extrac- tion, but we are British subjects, the citizens of a great and free empire; we live under the protecting shadows of one of the noblest constitutions the world has ever seen. The rights of Englishmen are ours, their privileges are ours, their constitu- tion is ours. But we are excluded from them.—Surendranath Banerjea, Calcutta, January 14, 18933 Uttered at diﬀerent moments across the British Empire by Indian sub- jects of the Crown, the lines quoted above posit a relation with the im- perial polity that strains against the Indians’ status as subject. If political